Mark, a Professional Real Estate Inspector, is a Past President (2011) of the Texas Association of Real Estate Inspectors WWW.TAREI.COM, Past-President of the San Antonio Real Estate Inspectors Assoc. and Chief Inspector at Five Star Home Inspections Inc. Contact him with Real Estate Inspection questions or needs at: abuyersinspector.com or, homeinspectorsinsanantonio.com

Note: This is an mySA.com City Brights Blog. These blogs are not written or edited by mySA or the San Antonio Express-News. The authors are solely responsible for the content.

New Home Warranty Inspections

While many home buyers are often fooled into believing that because a home is new that it doesn’t need to be inspected, the need for a thorough inspection of home is an incredible benefit to the home buyer.

Some of the common misconceptions and misleading statements about new homes are:
1. The home is inspected by the city inspectors, so if there is anything wrong, they’ll find it and it won’t pass inspection until it is corrected.
2. The builder’s ‘independent, 3rd party home inspector will find any defects, so you don’t need your own inspector.
3. There is a Warranty, “so ‘if anything goes wrong’, all you have to do is call us and we’ll repair it”.
4. “If there is a ‘structural problem’ you have a ’10 Year Warranty”.
5. It’s a new house, what could go wrong?

If you’ve bought a new house, you know exactly how the story goes.

Now, if you have bought a house within the last one or two years (it depends on your builder’s warranty), you have the opportunity to have the house properly inspected by an Inspector of your choosing and one that works for you.

Having your home professionally inspected by someone who has years of experience with new home construction provides you with one last opportunity to cause the builder to make repairs to your home before the builder’s obligation to repair has expired.

As a reminder, if you don’t have the defects repaired in your new home by your builder, when you attempt to sell the house, you may be asked to pay for the repairs your builder should have been responsible for.